Bridge conventions, and which ones are worth learning first

What a convention actually is

Bidding is a language with about 35 words in it, and a rule that each word must be higher than the last. That is very little room to describe 13 cards.

A convention buys room by taking a bid that natural methods barely need and giving it a job.

Stayman is the clearest example. After partner opens 1NT, a natural 2♣ , "I have clubs, let us play there", is a bid you almost never want.

So it is repurposed to ask a question you very often do: do you have a four-card major? Nothing is lost, and a great deal is gained.

The first two: Stayman and transfers

Both attach to the 1NT opening, which comes up on roughly one deal in eight.

Both solve the same problem: a 1NT opener has a balanced hand that might contain a four- or five-card major, and an eight-card major fit scores better than notrump on most hands.

• Stayman — 2♣ asks opener for a four-card major. Use it when you hold a four-card major and enough for at least an invitation.
• Jacoby transfers — 2♦ tells opener to bid hearts, 2♥ tells them to bid spades. Use them with a five-card major. The point is that the strong hand ends up as declarer, so the opening lead comes round to it rather than through it.

Learn these two together. They cover almost every hand facing a 1NT opening, and between them they turn the most common auction in bridge from a guess into a procedure.

Then: surviving interference

The opponents bid on roughly half of all deals, and most beginner partnerships have no agreements at all for what happens next. This is where the cheapest improvement in bridge is.

• Negative doubles — after partner opens and an opponent overcalls, your double is for takeout rather than penalties. This one is close to compulsory: without it you have no way to show a four-card major at the two level.
• Takeout doubles — the most common competitive call there is. A double of an opening bid asks partner to bid, and promises support for whichever suit they choose.
• Cappelletti — a way into the auction after an opponent opens 1NT, where natural overcalls are too dangerous and passing surrenders too often.
• Michaels and the unusual notrump — two ways to show a 5-5 two-suiter in a single call, on hands where naming one suit loses the other.
• Lebensohl — for when an opponent overcalls partner's 1NT and steals the whole two level. Advanced, and it fixes a hand type with no other answer.

Then: describing a good hand accurately

These come up less often, but when they do the hand is usually worth a lot of points.

• Jacoby 2NT — a game-forcing raise of partner's major with four-card support, which leaves the whole three level free for opener to describe shortage and strength.
• Two over one game forcing — a whole system rather than a single convention, and the main alternative to Standard American. It buys an enormous amount of slam-bidding room at the cost of complicating the 1NT response.
• Acol — the British system: four-card majors and a weak notrump. Worth reading if you play online, because you will meet it.
• New minor forcing — finds the 5-3 major fit that a 1NT rebid would otherwise bury.
• Drury — lets a passed hand show a limit raise without pushing the auction past two of the major, which matters because third-seat openings are often light.
• Splinter bids — a double jump showing a game-forcing raise and a singleton. The companion to Jacoby 2NT: one shows your shortage, the other asks for partner's.
• Bergen raises — trump length before strength, so a nine-card fit reaches the three level at once.
• Reverses — not a convention so much as a shape the auction takes, but knowing when your rebid forces partner to the three level is worth more than most conventions.
• Fourth suit forcing — with three suits bid, the fourth becomes a question. The sibling of new minor forcing, for when opener showed a second suit rather than rebidding notrump.
• Blackwood — 4NT asks for aces. The most famous convention in bridge and the most misused: knowing partner has two aces does not tell you they are the two you need, and it cannot ask about a void.

How many conventions should a partnership play?

Fewer than you want to. Every convention has three costs, and only the first is obvious.

1. You have to remember it — including at eleven at night on the last board, which is when it will come up.
2. You give up the natural meaning. Playing negative doubles means you cannot make a penalty double of a one-level overcall, and occasionally that is exactly what you wanted.
3. You have to agree the follow-ups. This is where partnerships actually come apart. Stayman is one bid and about six sequences after it, and a pair who agreed the bid but not the sequences is worse off than a pair who agreed neither.

The practical rule: add one convention, play fifty hands with it, and only then add another. A partnership playing five conventions fluently will beat one playing twenty approximately, every time.